At the SAP Connect event this week, SAP unveiled innovations that help companies build deeper, more meaningful relationships with their customers. Today, customers expect intelligent functions, precision and trusting cooperation in every phase of their business relationship.

SAP's latest customer experience solutions are designed to meet these expectations. They are designed to help companies win customer loyalty, increase growth and create seamless, connected customer experiences.

In today's market economy, customer loyalty and customer retention are the two drivers of repeat customer business, which is considered the lifeline of every company. Gaining and maintaining customer trust has always been an uphill battle. But now the bar is higher than ever. The newest SAP Emarsys Customer Loyalty Index shows that so-called “real customer loyalty” has decreased by five points. This refers to customers who buy from the same company again without any special incentives. Only 35 percent of B2B customers achieve the status of “strategically loyal customers”, i.e. customers who buy again and again and with whom the company maintains a long-term customer relationship. Almost a third of customers are lost because the customer experience is inconsistent. Companies are now faced with a new reality: To build lasting customer loyalty, they must understand customers and deliver consistent, connected experiences at every touchpoint.

Mastering the challenge of loyal customers: SAP Engagement Cloud and SAP Customer Loyalty Management

To support customers with this challenge, SAP has developed two powerful solutions: SAP Engagement Cloud and SAP Customer LoyaltyManagement.

SAP board member Muhammad Alam presented the vision of SAP Engagement Cloud as the next evolution in enterprise engagement at SAP Connect 2025 yesterday. It is based on the SAP Business Data Cloud and the SAP CX application suite and coordinates the management of relationships throughout the company: including with customers, suppliers and employees.

The solution also connects all areas – finance, human resources, marketing and service – and uses AI to translate business data into actions that lead to better results: better deliveries, faster service and greater customer loyalty. SAP Engagement Cloud unifies real-time interactions across marketing, commerce, sales and service. By connecting all customer touchpoints with operational data such as logistics, finance and supply chain, companies can create accurate offers and deliver real-time services and personalized customer experiences at scale. This is particularly important because, according to the SAP Emarsys Customer Loyalty Index, only 18 percent of B2B customers achieve “strategically loyal customer” status.

With built-in AI and Joule, SAP Engagement Cloud automates decisions, accelerates campaigns, and supports cross-brand and cross-region operations so teams can immediately deliver consistent, predictive, and unified customer experiences.

The solution will be in beta in November 2025 and is expected to be generally available in the first quarter of 2026. The initial focus will be on the customer experience.

SAP Customer Loyalty Management enables teams to deliver a tailored customer experience at scale by assigning an individual loyalty profile to each customer, regardless of brand, region or partner. With unified customer loyalty data integrated into SAP Private Cloud ERP and SAP Business Suite, teams can directly track sales promotions and rewards utilization and understand financial impact in real time. These valuable insights flow directly into planning, forecasting and supply chain decisions, enabling companies to respond quickly and better serve customers.

Customer loyalty is not a separate factor in marketing, but rather part of daily business processes. SAP Customer Loyalty Management enables the centralization of customer loyalty data, helping companies deeply understand each customer and deliver a consistent overall experience at every interaction point.

The solution will be available in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Companies benefit from AI and intelligent processes

At SAP Connect we presented how joulesSAP's AI co-pilot, is revolutionizing the customer experience by integrating intelligent functions directly into the SAP Business Suite. Joule is not an additional layer, but embedded in processes from the ground up. The AI ​​assistant enables users to make smarter decisions and act faster in all situations.

AI assistants in joules Support customer-facing teams in service, sales, marketing and trading with role-based intelligence. Each assistant is tailored to the user's role and business context and coordinates a network of AI assistants within Joule to automate various tasks, such as solving cases, tracking invoices, optimizing catalogs and generating insights. Thanks to this coordination, teams don't have to worry about processes and can instead focus on achieving results.

The Digital Service Agent for example, provides fast and multilingual support by obtaining customer context and company information. On this basis, the agent then provides precise answers, starts escalation processes if necessary and continually ensures optimization. It helps to reduce manual workload and increase customer satisfaction. This innovation is now available.

Deep Research in Joules

The function Deep Research in Joules offers more than just quick answers to customer planning and enables comprehensive strategic research and analysis in a single, consistent environment. Users leverage SAP data, external information and trusted resources to gain greater insight for all business needs.

Sales managers and chief revenue officers can use the new customer planning, which leverages deep research in Joule, to reduce weeks of manual work into days. The feature compiles customer history, identifies key drivers, and designs customer plans, giving sales teams a complete, real-time view of each customer relationship.

Deep Research in Joule will be available in beta in December 2025.

Intelligent applications for customer experience

SAP Business AI also forms the basis for intelligent applicationswhich companies can use to turn data into action:

• Revenue intelligence brings together data from CRM, commerce and ERP to identify risks in sales pipelines and determine customer relationship health and sales performance. Sales leaders and chief revenue officers gain a unified, real-time view to strengthen pipelines, increase close rates and accelerate profitable growth.
• Consumer Products Intelligence enables manufacturers and consumer goods companies to optimize trade promotions and customer-oriented offers. The application is in the solutions SAP Integrated Business Planning and SAP Analytics Cloud integrates and leverages real-time data from sales, supply chain and manufacturing to analyze margins, monitor performance and support financial planning. This ensures that customer experience strategies are aligned with operational realities.

These innovations are tightly integrated into the SAP Business Suite, ensuring that all customer experience insights are based on harmonized, real-time data. They are currently available as a limited private preview and are expected to be generally available in the first half of 2026.

Added value through optimal use

As the Customer Loyalty Index findings on the importance of end-to-end processes confirm, seamless, interactive use of applications is essential to delivering value. That's why WalkMe now integrated into all SAP customer experience solutions.

WalkMe is a digital adoption platform that offers role-based assistance in real time – directly on the SAP interface. No IT notifications are required. Teams get help with their daily tasks with step-by-step instructions that minimize training time and reduce errors. Managers have an immediate overview of where users are having difficulties, so they can remove obstacles and significantly improve the effective use of applications.

The way into the future

Customer loyalty evolves, as do we. Our goal is to help companies gain trust and adapt quickly.

The SAP Customer Experience innovations presented at SAP Connect are designed to overcome these challenges. They connect engagement with execution through solutions like SAP Engagement Cloud, Revenue Intelligence and SAP Customer Loyalty Management, turn valuable insights into action with built-in AI and automation, and provide teams with unified, real-time data so they can deliver measurable results and stay ahead in a rapidly changing market.

Read the studies Customer Loyalty Index and Buyer Loyalty Index to check how your company is performing.Find out more about the SAP Customer Experience content at SAP Connect here.

Balaji Balasubramanian is President and Chief Product Officer of SAP Customer Experience.